by Pam Godwin
She curled her fingers around his belt loops, registering the small gun between his tailbone and waistband. Multiple knives strapped to his hips, legs, and boots. Loaded magazines filled every pocket and holster. He was a walking armory.
“Let’s go.” He charged into the hall.
She did her best to keep up with his long-legged strides. Arturo stepped in behind her, pacing backward to cover the rear.
Her breathing sped up, tripping in her throat as Tiago navigated a maze of never-ceasing turns and stairs.
The muffled report of gunfire alerted her they were getting close, and she silently thanked him for coming for her.
His body felt like steel beneath her hands, shifting and flexing through a seamless glide of muscle. Her gaze traced the sinewy cords in his thick neck, taking in the strength of it, the harsh cut of his rigid jaw, and the profile of a face chiseled in stone.
He was such a devastatingly sexy man. If he were normal and this was normal, she might’ve told him he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
The boom of guns came in bursts, slowing between each report but growing louder as he crept to a doorway. It opened to a massive garage crammed with more luxury cars and motorcycles than she could count.
Armed men patrolled the space. Just outside the wall of garage doors waited more men, who fired off sporadic rounds and shouted at one another.
“This is the only way out,” he whispered so low she had to strain her ears. “I need to clear the room.”
Before she could draw a breath, he was on the move. Arms stretched out before him, he trained the pistols and sidled along the back wall, using his body as a shield in front of her.
The men in the garage didn’t spot him creeping amid the shadows. Arturo veered off in the opposite direction, rifle raised, headed toward the huge garage doors.
Her pulse pommeled, her stomach a block of ice, as her fingers dug into Tiago’s hips.
He reached a wall covered with small hooks holding keys. Flicking his gaze over it, he examined each one.
What was the plan? Would he steal a car?
He snatched a key, apparently the one he was looking for, given the glimmer in his eyes. Then he pivoted, gripped her arms, and shoved her into a nook between a workbench and concrete wall.
“Stay,” he mouthed.
She locked her legs as he spun and blitzed through the garage toward the enemy, his guns up and firing.
Two men went down. Others shot back. He found cover behind an engine block, but the shooters closed in, surrounding him.
On the far side, Arturo hoisted one of the rolling garage doors, letting in a flood of morning light.
The distraction allowed Tiago to fire off another kill shot. But more men flooded in, through the open door and from the other side of the garage.
Her heart pounded so hard it made her lightheaded. She felt helpless, useless, her hand clutching her throat as she watched without breath.
Arturo volleyed bullets from the shadows, taking down the men Tiago missed. But there were too many.
They were outnumbered.
Bullets pinged off steel casings and pelleted beautiful cars. Glass shattered. Dying groans sounded from fallen bodies.
Arturo let out an enraged shout, dropping beneath a flurry of fists and losing his gun. A moment later, he found his feet and launched into a bloody brawl with multiple men, punching and choking and spitting blood.
She searched the space around her and spotted a tire iron. Dropping to hands and knees, she crawled to it, curled her fingers around the cold metal, and waited with her heart in her stomach.
Tiago must’ve run out of ammo, because he chucked his last gun and reached back to free the machete from his backpack.
In a blur of incredible speed and strength, he ran through the half a dozen attackers, taking down the ones with guns.
The din of bullets fell silent, replaced by the panting grunts of hand-to-hand combat.
She trained her eyes on the open garage door and spotted a clear path.
Gripping the dangling handcuff against the tire iron so it wouldn’t rattle, she drew in a deep breath and ran.
The shadows along the back wall concealed her escape. No one noticed her. Those who were still alive were fighting to stay that way.
Twenty feet from the exit, Arturo bent over a man, pummeling his fists, over and over. Farther away, Tiago took on three others, slashing the machete with the skill of a professional assassin.
She reached the exit and peered outside.
Bodies scattered the parking lot. The gunfight had moved down the street, and the number of shooters seemed to have been drastically reduced.
Buildings lined the narrow roads. Plenty of places to hide and provide cover as she fled this nightmare.
This was it.
She could make a run for it and find a way to contact Matias.
Her hand slicked around the tire iron as she stepped into the parking lot and tasted the bright light of freedom.
Another step and the space between her shoulder blades itched.
He had come all this way for her. Protected her. Shielded her with his body. And she was bailing on him?
Her chest squeezed, and her throat closed.
Fuck!
She couldn’t leave. Not without looking back. Not without seeing him one more time.
Twisting her neck, Kate scanned the garage behind her. As she honed in on the powerful body laid out on the floor, a sudden coldness hit her core.
She’d expected Tiago to be the only one standing, not face down in blood with a man pounding fist after fist into his ribs.
Her hand squeezed around the tire iron, clanking the handcuffs.
She needed to leave.
Right now.
Tiago stretched an arm toward the machete, but it lay too far out of reach.
Her shoes turned into blocks of cement.
Fucking goddammit!
Across the garage, Arturo wrestled another man in and out of a choke hold. The rest were dead or too injured to move.
Tiago continued to lie there as that fucker pounded fists into his back and ribs. He just took it, his legs twitching as he absorbed every strike.
Her heart cried out, and her molars slammed together, grinding hard enough to break enamel.
Before her brain caught up, her legs were moving, carrying her toward him as fast as she could run.
She was neither stealthy nor strong. But she was quick, approaching the man’s back and smacking the tire iron into his head before he knew what hit him.
He toppled over, and she continued to swing, slamming the metal rod into his skull, again and again. She didn’t stop hitting until strong arms banded around her, yanking her back, pulling her away.
The weapon fell from her hands, and she turned, stunned so completely she felt as though she were floating outside of her body.
Lifting her head, she stared into Tiago’s impossibly gorgeous eyes and swayed. Or maybe the room was swaying.
No, it was him.
She grabbed his leather-clad arms and steadied him. “Are you okay?”
“I am now.” He tiptoed ice-cold fingers along her jaw, leaned in, and stopped before their lips made contact. “Got a lot to say and do to you, but we need to go.”
A scream sounded from an office-like room in the front of the garage. A woman’s scream.
His face tightened, and he bent down to snatch the machete from the floor.
On the other side of the room, Arturo snapped up his head, where he stepped through piles of carnage, stabbing anyone who still lived.
“Who is that?” Kate shifted toward the office.
A slender figure emerged in the doorway. Short black hair. Seductive mouth. Iliana.
Why was she in that room and not fighting alongside the others? Was she hiding?
Iliana spotted Tiago and ran toward him. “Jefe, oh my God! You made it!”
He gave Kate’s hand a squeeze and prowled ahead,
toward the approaching woman, slowly, stiffly, letting the machete hang from his lolling fingers.
Was he tilting a little to the side?
Blood covered him from head to toe. His clothes were an utter mess and would need to be burned, but there weren’t any concentrated stains. Nothing to indicate the blood was coming from him.
As she studied his gait, he seemed steady. Strong. He’d taken a helluva beating and was probably in a world of hurt.
“I was so afraid they got you.” Iliana raced toward him and raised her arms, as if to embrace him.
Two steps away, he stopped, flexed his hand. Then he ran the blade of the machete through her stomach and out the back.
Her mouth gaped, eyes wide with shock as she doubled over the hilt.
He twisted it, gave it a hard shove, and yanked it free.
Kate cupped a hand over her mouth to smother a whimper. What the unholy fuck?
When Iliana hit the floor, he wiped the blade on her shirt and jeans until it was clean. That done, he rose and stalked toward Kate.
Her heart pounded as she shuffled back. “Why?”
“She betrayed me.” He strode past her, grabbed her hand, and hauled her with him. “She took you from me.”
“How do you know?”
“Why do you think she tried so hard to get in my bed?” He veered toward a row of motorcycles, his gaze sweeping over each one. “She was feeding information to the cartel.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Money. Protection. Who knows? Maybe they were holding something over her.” He punched something into his phone and pocketed it.
“That’s how they found you in the desert.”
“And how they knew you were important to me.”
Her chest constricted. “You knew she was a traitor all this time?”
“No.” He paused beside the biggest, meanest-looking bike and inserted the key from his pocket. “I’m suspicious in nature. Never trusted her. When she vanished after you were taken, I knew.”
So he killed her.
There was a time, not too long ago, when he would’ve run that blade through Kate.
He removed the backpack from his shoulders, stored the machete in it, and strapped it onto her back.
“Arturo!” he shouted across the garage. “You good?”
“Never been better.” The guard strode toward the open garage door, his face a mask of blood as he took off in the direction of lingering gunfire.
Tiago mounted the motorcycle and fired up the engine. “Hop on.”
“Helmets?”
“Afraid not.”
“Shouldn’t we take one of the sports cars, instead?”
“If we’re chased, this is the best option.” His eyes turned flinty. “I’m getting impatient.”
Grateful he’d brought her a pair of shorts and shoes, she swung a leg over the huge hunk of steel and scooted in behind him.
The handcuff on her wrist caught against his leather jacket as she wrapped her arms around his chest.
He tensed and adjusted her hold to squeeze him lower around his abs. Then he zoomed out of the garage, polluting the air with a hard rev of the engine.
Turning in the opposite direction of the gunfight, he hit the narrow streets at a speed that stole her breath.
Her hair whipped around her head, her body bending with his as he ducked low, his face protected by the small windshield.
She tucked in tight against his back and squinted her eyes away from the blasts of air. The sun sat just over the horizon, the humidity clinging to her pores despite the constant lashing of wind.
He didn’t slow. Not through stop signs or intersections. He raced out of the small, concrete town scattered with sagging buildings and minimal traffic and arrowed into a thick copse of trees.
The winding road snaked through a jungle-like terrain. Twenty minutes in, asphalt turned to dirt, and civilization faded behind her.
Did he know where he was going?
She clenched her arms around his waist, blinking through the windblown tangles of her hair.
Another twenty minutes zipped by, taking them deeper into the tropical wilderness of massive trees and hanging vines.
He’d stopped maintaining a constant speed. The motorcycle slowed, sped up, teetered a little, and thrust forward again.
Why did he feel so rigid in her arms?
Slipping a hand under his zipped jacket, she followed the grooves of his hard stomach to his chest. He felt really cold and sweaty through the shirt. His breaths heaved shallowly, erratically against her palm.
Then her fingers encountered wetness.
She yanked her hand back and held it up.
Blood.
“Tiago!” She grabbed his arm. “Stop the bike.”
“Almost there.”
“How far?” she shouted into the gust.
“Two hours.”
“You’ll be dead by then!”
He hit the gas, refusing to stop. The next mile blurred by. And another. Then the bike wobbled.
She held onto his waist, eyes closed, bracing for impact. But he kept them upright and found a turnoff, veering onto a trail and slowing through overgrown foliage.
Woody branches scratched her bare legs as he eased them to a stop without crashing.
She jumped off and spun in a circle, scanning the surroundings.
Trees. More trees. So much green and buzzing insects and endless nature. They were in a fucking jungle, without doctors or medical supplies.
“What the actual fuck, Tiago?” She whirled on him. “Were you shot? Stabbed?”
He killed the engine, slid off the bike, and walked to a nearby clearing. “Just need to sit for a second.”
His gait was wrong, lacking his usual power and confidence. He stumbled into a lopsided step, and she raced to his side, hooking his arm over her shoulders and lowering him to the ground.
Kneeling before him, she shrugged off the backpack and inspected his face.
Clammy complexion, pained eyes, sinful lips, he looked so damn beautiful, even in agony.
“Where’s your phone?” She patted the front pockets of his jeans. “Need to call Boones.”
“Already sent him an alert. My phone has a tracker. He’ll find us.”
A smidgen of relief loosened her shoulders.
“I have to remove your jacket.” She yanked down the zipper.
The instant she wrangled it off his arms, her heart plunged to her sneakers.
Multiple stab wounds gouged his shoulder, and it looked like a bullet went through the side of his chest. And the blood… God, she could taste the gravity of it on her tongue.
No wonder he’d moved her arms to his waist when she mounted the bike.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She ripped his t-shirt down the front, carefully removed it from his body, and shredded strips of it to use as bandages.
“The knife wounds are superficial, and the bullet just grazed my side.”
“Why is there so much blood?”
“You were going to run.”
The rapid change of subject stammered her breath, and she dragged her gaze to his. “What?”
“At the warehouse. You started out the garage door. But you came back. You chose me.” His voice broke on the last word, at odds with the smug look in his eyes.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I want my freedom back.” She tore open the backpack and dug through weapons, searching for medical supplies. “Do you have anything in here—?”
The click-click-click of metal yanked her attention to her wrist.
The open end of the handcuffs, which had hung from her arm a moment ago, was now shackled around his.
She pulled, and his hand came with it, snug within the cuff. Locked. “You did not just do that.”
“I’m not letting you go.” His eyes hooded, heavy with pain, but his timbre carried all the weight of a possessive, overbearing man.
“Where’s the key?”
“Don’t h
ave it.”
“What if you die?” Outrage screeched into her voice.
“Not gonna die.”
“You’re bleeding all over the fucking place, and I don’t even know if the bullet is still in you.”
“Check the jacket.” He lowered to his back and dropped his unshackled arm across his forehead.
She snatched the pile of leather, swinging his cuffed hand around with hers as she hunted for a bullet hole.
There it was, a tiny tear in the back of the jacket. How had she missed that?
A knife had cut up his shoulder pretty good, but the leather wasn’t torn all to hell. The jacket must’ve been hanging open, which meant he’d zipped it later to hide the wounds from her.
Grinding her teeth, she ripped up the rest of his shirt and stared at the battlefield on his chest. “I don’t know what to do.”
“There’s a first-aid kit at the bottom of the backpack.”
He talked her through how to clean and dress the injuries. There was enough gauze to wrap the wounds, and his instructions were precise and calm. Given the number of scars on his body, he knew his way around an injury.
“How long before Boones arrives?” She wadded up the jacket and propped it under his head.
“Don’t know.” His voice took on an edge of pain. “An hour-ish. Maybe more.”
“What about Arturo?”
“He went to the desert with another guard. Need them there to look after Tate.”
Tiago could’ve just freed Tate and eliminated that complication, but this was neither the time nor place for that argument.
“Can we call someone else?” She used the extra pieces of the shirt to clean his mouth, cheeks, and neck.
“No.” He lay on his back and stared up at her, the look on his face not like a man who lost a lot of blood.
His tongue peeked out, wetting his lips, his gaze alert and watchful. Always watching, staring as if he were seconds from swallowing her whole.
“You must be hurting.” And delirious. She rummaged through the first-aid kit. “Do you have anything to dull the pain?”
“You.”
“Get real.”
“You are going to take the edge off.”
She let out a tight laugh and glanced down. He wasn’t even hard.
His eyes lost focus through a long, slow blink, as if he were fighting to stay awake. “Sit on my cock.”
